Your views in 200 words or less

September 28, 2011 10:39 am

Over the past few months the mainstream media, including columnist Eugene Robinson (TNT, 9-27), has been telling us the same thing over and over about the Republican presidential candidates: They make up a weak field.

That doesn’t surprise me. The vast majority of journalists in this country are liberals, and they vote for the Democratic candidate. They never seem to pass up a chance to downplay Republicans and cheerlead for President Obama.

If the journalists quote a source for their “weak field” report, they usually state it was anonymous or a secret GOP political operative or donor. Would that be Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi?

I am thrilled with the Republican candidates, and so are all of the Republicans I know. This is perhaps the strongest and most qualified field of candidates the Republican Party has ever had for a presidential election – an active governor and two congressmen, a past senator and several past governors, and a successful businessman. All of them are leaders in their own right. Additional candidates, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, would just add to this stellar group.

Robinson asks, “How’s that Rick Perry stuff workin’ out for ya?”

I would tell him a whole lot better than that “hopey-changey” stuff Obama promised.

Really? So you bought what Perry said at a debate about clearing the Nitrous Oxide out of the Texas atmosphere? DO YOU KNOW what Nitrous Oxide is? I don’t need to have Nitrous Oxide – I’m laughing already!

I would humbly suggest that Mr. Chilton look up Mr. David Brooks’ comments about the current Republican candidates for President. Mr. Brooks is a conservative in the true sense of the word.
He should also remember that most republicans will back anyone wearing their party’s nametag. Remember the guy named Trump?
We might have nitrous oxide overload if Mr. Chilton’s supporters continue along the same line.
Having Obama President is a breath of fresh air and I sleep very well at night knowing that nothing bad will happen to our human rights and freedoms no matter how hard the Republicans, particularly those in the US House, try.

Robinson sounds like some demented football fan trying to make a case for the Kansas City Chiefs being a better team than the Green Bay Packers.

Romney, Perry, and Huntsman have more executive experience in government than Obama. Huntsman served one term as governor of Utah. Romney served one term as governor of Massachussetts. Perry is in his thrid term as governor of Texas.

Romney, Huntsman, and Cain have more business experience than Obama. Romney has a law degree and MBA from Harvard. He served as CO of Bain & Company and founded Bain Capital. Huntsman served as an executive for the Huntsman Corporation, the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, and as CEO of Huntsman Family Holdings Company.Cain is the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and a former deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Obama is a community organizer, a half-term senator, and the failed CEO of the largest enterprise on the planet.

If Republicans are so thrilled why are they abandoning candidates willy-nilly and still hopeful Christie will join in? Why did the Tea Party drop Perry like a stone just for saying that children of illegal immigrants need an education, too?

When there is a strong field, people can forgive or make ight of the one or two issues where a candidate might slightly differ in opinion or focus. When you have a weak field, and the candidates are barely treading water, like the current candidates, one slight mishap drowns their chances.

Sometimes it would be good to remember that neither the Republicans or the Democrats represent the majority of American voters. Since both are politically corrupt to the core it probable that the independents will rule the day in the next election as they did in the more recent congressional elections. A quick look at the results of European socialism should convince any American of the folly of going in that direction any further.

Most of our Republician hopefuls are superb, and many times more qualified than the Kommie Kommunity Organizer from Chicago. I happen to like Cain, and he runs, polls show about half the Blacks will jump ship for experience and integrity.

“Romney, Perry, and Huntsman have more executive experience in government than Obama.”If Obama crowed about that experience, he’d be called a “career politician”

“Romney, Huntsman, and Cain have more business experience than Obama”

Romney is known for his ability to eliminate workers.

Within 14 months, Cain had taken Godfather’s Pizza from 911 stores down to 420 stores. Sounds like he was going backward.

Huntsman has served as CEO of his family’s Huntsman Corporation, the private equivilant of Obama’s community organizaing experience.

AS USUAL.…the Conservative(s) misrepresent Obama’s experience….

He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

“Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, _______________ was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives, but failed in two attempts at a seat in the United States Senate.”

According to old ben, this person wasn’t qualified to be president.

(hint: Tacoma has a high school named after Abraham Lincoln….oops I spilled the beans…..)

It’s Obama who is doing the whistling, and he has one foot in the grave and the other stuck in his mouth.

Yes, Obama has presidential experience, as did Jimmy Carter. Didn’t help much in his bid for re-election. Sinking the ship the first time at sea is not the kind of experience that gets one another command.

Romney has two degress from Harvard, but he has been a successful governor and businessman in spite of it. What’s Obama’s excuse?

“If he created jobs, I wish he could create some here instead of, you know, taking them away.”
“I don’t think Romney is creating jobs because he took every one of them away.”
“They cut the wages…we no longer had insurance…we had no rights anymore.”
“He cut our wages to put money back in his pocket.”
Yet apparently such “business expertise” gets you high praise from the mainstream media. On the May 30 edition of NBC’s “Today,” co-host Matt Lauer said “many” are describing Romney as looking “presidential.” To which Tim Russert replied:

Matt, I think your interview and your analysis is exactly on target. Mitt Romney is seen as someone who looks presidential with the business and CEO experience.

Firing workers wholesale and offering their jobs back at lower wages—great background for president.

Since “residency” is such an issue when it comes to Obama….it should be fun if Romney gets the nomination and the press starts grilling him about the residency issue when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts.

According to his filing, he lived in the basement of his son’s home, last year….

“Mitt Romney lived in his son’s unfinished basement in Belmont, Massachusetts in 2010 – or at least that what he claimed to the state to be able to vote last year, says GOP candidate Fred Karger.

If that’s true, Romney showed a true commitment to voting for Republican Senator Scott Brown in last year’s special election, since he owns a $12.5 million home in La Jolla, Calif. and a $10 million home in New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee – but no home in the state he was once governor.”

You sleep well at night with President Obama in the White House do you? What’s your Rx?

I don’t lose sleep over national politics, I lose sleep over political situations at work.

BUT, none of the clowns running (with the possible exception of Huntsman) as resident of the White House wouldn’t make me less anxious then I already am.

My prescription is don’t vote in the two-party charade or, if you still think voting is anything other than a diversion from the reality that the Corporate/Military Complex is in charge, vote 3rd Party.

“Personally, I’ll take the guy that survived the lies about his heritage, his associations and his race. “

I bet that stuff is the last thing on the minds of Pakistani’s…

“In Pakistan, thousands of protesters denounced the United States in marches throughout the South Asian nation. Hundreds of demonstrators shouted, “Death to America,” in a protest outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Rehman Malik met with a visiting Chinese official in what some analysts interpreted as an attempt to bolster relations with China. He promised to attack Chinese militants hiding along Pakistan’s border with China.

In 2009, the company posted $100 million dollars in revenue. It was estimated that its production and sales growth could lead to a market cap between $1.76 – 2 billion dollars.[9] 2010 revenues were approximately $140 million.

“Solyndra LLC had such steep financial problems in late 2010 that the company violated terms of its loan-guarantee agreement with the Department of Energy and technically defaulted on its $535 million loan, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Right now it is at the door of the advisors… how long before they crack…

“Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company’s rapid ascent.

At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn’t rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn’t need the help.

you quoted – “Within 14 months, Cain had taken Godfather’s Pizza from 911 stores down to 420 stores.”

the actual verbage – “Within 14 months, Cain had taken Godfather’s Pizza from 911 stores down to 420 stores and reduced costs significantly. As a result of his efforts Godfather’s Pizza finally became profitable.”

you left out a significant piece of the sentence and did not annotate that with a commonly used … to signify their is more.

I am crushed at your deception. Did you do that for any of the other candidates? Is their something “different” about Cain vs the others, huh karnos

“He left his executive post to work for Burger King – a Pillsbury subsidiary at the time – managing 400 stores in the Philadelphia area. Under Cain’s leadership, his region went from the least profitable for Burger King to the most profitable in three years.”

This is how it’s done karnitos. A complete post with a capital to begin and a period to end.

My, my, my that Herman Cain sure does know how to turn companies around doesn’t he. Godfather’s and Burger King…

makes ya wonder if he can translate those skills to turning a country around… now that I’d like to experiance.

the reason why Obama won was that W was so crappy, the reason why W won was because Gore was a horrible candidate who, through association, was tainted by Clinton’s taste in cigars and blue dresses and the “liberal media” was tired of “Clinton fatigue” so they gave candidate W rave revues anytime he was able to complete a sentence and not choke on a pretzel.

Voting against Obama is not a good enough reason to elect yet another loser who will turn out to be even worse.

Comparing Obama and Romney, the guy with no business or executive experience and the guy with extensive business and executive experience, it’s hard to imagine Romney being worse than Obama. While the government is not a business per se, the analogy is strong. The current level of concern for the financial health of this nation is evidence of the lack of sound financial management over the past years, if not decades. The “social justice” approach has brought us only shared misery. Let’s try personal and national responsilibty for a change. It’s not a zero sum game.

per se
/pɜr ˈseɪ, ˈsi, pər/ Show Spelled[pur sey, see, per] Show IPA
adverb
by, of, for, or in itself; intrinsically: This candidate is not a pacifist per se, but he is in favor of peaceful solutions when practicable. Synonyms: innately, inherently, indigenously, fundamentally.

Not only is the government not a business per se, it is not a business at all.

Arguing via analogy is, per se, comparing apples to oranges and then concluding that, since apples, oranges must be red.

I find it odd that when asking about qualified candidates on the right that most people start comparing them to Obama. I’m sorry folks, pare your field down to the one that you want…until then they need to stand on their own merits.

Personally, I like Herman Cain’s business experience…However, if he can’t even win a Senate seat in GA – how can you expect him to win the White House? And, once there…Given his statements re: Muslims, I simply don’t see him as representing all people of the US. I think though that he does represent the best shot at defeating Obama but I just don’t see it happening. Romney? Perry? Sorry…definately not happening. Palin? Laughable. Bachmann? More so. There has to be someone out there.

While I do lean left, I would be more than willing to vote with the R’s if they nominate someone with any quality or electability.

Instead of being “thrilled” with their candidates, Republicans are almost reeling in shock (real or feigned) whenever one of them utters a comment. They’ve pretty well trashed Romney using everything in their power except what they really mean – that he is not “Chrisitan enough” for them (said in a whisper of contempt).

Every day we read about a new shocker for them. Ron Paul disgusts them because he said Obama should not have taken out an al Qaida leader on the field of battle and should have given him a court trial.

Bachmann horrifies them because she says we should forget about democracy in the Middle East and stand up on the side of cruel dictators. (The Arab Spring was a terrible thing for Israel, and would not have happened if Obama had sent military support to Mubarak and stood up for the other oil countries’ dictators, she said)

Who is next on their hit list that they say they are so “thrilled” to have as candidates even while they chop their heads off?

xx, I am always up for voting for a good, moderate Republican that has better ideas than the Dem. I was looking forward to a rousing challenge by McCain at the start of the last election until he had to go further and further into far-right insanity to try to please that group.

At the start of that campaign I couldn’t have told you who I was voting for, except someone who could clean up the mess of the country that Bush made of it.

Right now it looks like it’ll be Obama by default, I and will hold my nose while voting. I don’t think our country can stand being chewed alive by the hungry sharks of the far right who cannot distinguish between the good things about our country and the bad in their feeding frenzy and who are dragging all their candidates into the blood lust of their ideologies.

I recently heard conservative pollster Scott Rasmussen speak. He reported to the audience that it is no secret that if the election were held today that either Perry or Romney defeats Obama fairly easily and that the election will be held completely as an economic referendum. Social issues and national security are virtually a moot point with likely votes. What was concerning was his polling that showed that even a very modest improvement in the economy results in Obama winning over EVERY GOP candidate.

In his remarks he also concluded that nobody can make a prediction about the economy in the next 12 months. It’s going to get very, very interesting.

Squid, I guess that is why Republicans are doing their darndest to keep the economy on the skids and refusing to provide any leadership on the jobs and economy front, trying all of these distractions on the social agenda like illegal immigration and abortion.

Squid – I don’t know where Rasmussen was getting his data – just googled and most every poll I saw says that Romney and Obama are even with Perry trailing Obama (there were a few that did say Romney or Perry were leading) not sure how that supports a conclusion “defeats Obama fairly easily”

Squid, I am usually not a conspiracy theorist, but many times since Obama got elected, I have seen Republicans turn a 360 on issues and renounce their own ideas just to hand Obama a defeat. I have seen them stall, vote down, refuse to vote on appointments and use other tactics just to make it difficult for the country to have leadership or direction at a time it needs it badly.

Since 2008, an Obama defeat seems to be their highest priority and more important to them than anything else. Perhaps they are not “mean – and hard-hearted.” Perhaps they just lost sight of how it affects the nation in the haze of their ideological zeal.

I think you are correct that such a strategy is the most cynical thing I have ever witnessed in politics.

Selective memory much tuddo? You should take off those Obama colored glasses sometimes.

When Bush was elected, wasn’t the main goal of the Democrats to make Bush a one term president? Didn’t it start with Clinton arbitrarily changing the arsenic from 50 ppm to 10 ppm his last day in office. Then the Democrats started the campaign that would force Bush into a corner if he tried to change it back to the reasonable levels from before. They started the campaign that Bush wants to poison your water and kill old people and children (the favorite saying from the left).

The goal of both partied is to make one term presidents out of newly elected presidents of the opposite party. I think you are being disingenuous if you believe otherwise.

the gloves, interesting hyou would use the arsenic standard as some kind of statement against Dems. Clinton changed it to 10 ppm after industry urged him to reject the 5 ppm. It took a lot of public testimony for the change. When Bush came in, and told his appointee, Whiitman to suspend the rule im,mediately and said that he would go with what scientists found in their own studies, rejecting Clinton’s study showing 5 ppm should be the standard.

Here is from an AP story on Oct 31, 2001

“Whitman had asked the National Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of establishing a standard of 3, 5, 10 or 20 parts per billion. At each level, the study found, the cancer risks were much higher than the EPA under Clinton had estimated.

The report pointed to health effects other than cancer that should be considered, including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. It also rejected arguments by industry and some local water utilities that there is a clear, safe threshold below which arsenic does not cause cancer.

Lawsuits by NRDC since last year initially prompted the Clinton administration to propose a standard of 5 ppb, but after industry protests it was set at 10 ppb.

Congress amended the 1974 Safe Water Drinking Act last fall and ordered the EPA to adopt a new arsenic standard by this summer. ”

It was perhaps cynical and political of Clinton to refuse the scientists’ report that 5 ppm should be the standard in favor of industries calls for a higher level so they could keep killing people with arsenic pollution, but hardly cynical to reduce it in the face of real evidence.

I don’t call that politics, and hardly arbitrary after the three years of public testimony on the issue. I call it one of the important things government does for us, protecting our health and basing decisions on facts from actual science.

The reason I had heard of the controversy is at the time, we were looking to buy a house. One of the places we were looking was along the beach north of Federal Way. Studies had shown that this area had about 50 ppb of arsenic in the soil, but it was not part of the Asarco mitigation area.

We decided to buy in an area that had been scraped clean with fill dirt added, and it tested at 1.5 ppb which is actually less than many naturally-occurring glacial fill soils in Puget Sound.

The studies, starting in 1987, honed in on 5 ppb as a threshold of “low” cancer rates and 10 ppb as “moderately low”. (I think it is something like the difference of 1/100,00 and 1/10,000). With grandkids playing in the dirt, we decided 50 ppb would be OK for us oldsters, but not for them.

Clinton had just appeased the business community with the 10 ppb decision. It was a decision roundly derided by environmentalists, who had wanted 3 or 5 ppb and corporate polluters, who wanted the 50ppb to remain.

I don’t recall anything in any analysis at the time that it was done to make Republicans look bad.

Then Bush’s studies backfired on him and showed that even at 3 ppb the chances of cancer were about 1/10,000, plus other diseases spiked with that level of arsenic pollution, especially diabetis, so the EPA went with 3 ppb.

I guess thegloves would theorize that Bush lowered it to make the Dems look bad.

“…That Democrats moved to overturn Bush’s ruling was no surprise. Party members have been vociferous in their opposition, going so far as to produce a bitingly sarcastic television commercial featuring a young girl holding a cup of water saying, “More arsenic in my water, Mommy.”…”

thegloves, in your original post about this you claimed that Clinton arbitrarily changed the standards and Bush changed it back to “reasonable levels from before.”

Both of those statements are blatantly false, as I have shown. Clinton changed it from a level that had been known since 1987 to cause a huge number of unnecessary cancers to a level that industry said they could live with.

Bush put a hold on implementation until he could get scientists to provide cover for his actions to move it back up to 50ppb. Unfortunately for him, the scientists his administration chose showed that even the Clinton rule far exceeded any tolerable amount of arsenic in the water and soil.

I agree that it makes sense to attack a decision that runs afoul of the best interest of the people of the United States usng scientific facts at hand.

“Biting sarcasm” you mentioned based on scientific facts is in contrast, for example, with the balatant lies the Republicans used to try to block the healthcare reform by saying “death panels” would kill old folks.

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